ASecret

Garden

Your Little World...

If tha’ goes round that way tha’ll come to th’ gardens,’ she said, pointing to a gate in a wall of shrubbery. ‘There’s lots o’ flowers in summer-time, but there’s nothin’ bloomin’ now.’ She seemed to hesitate a second before she added, ‘One of th’ gardens is locked up. No one has been in it for ten years.’

‘Why?’ asked Mary in spite of herself.

‘Mr. Craven had it shut when his wife died so sudden He won’t let no one go inside. It was her garden. He locked th’ door an’ dug a hole and buried th’ key.’

After she was gone Mary turned down the walk which led to the door in the shrubbery. She could not help thinking about the garden which no one had been into for ten years. She wondered what it would look like and whether there were any flowers still alive in it.

There were bare flower-beds on either side of it and against the walls ivy grew thickly. The dark green leaves were more bushy than else-where. It seemed as if for a long time that part had been neglected. was one part of the wall where the creeping dark green leaves were more bushy than elsewhere. It seemed as if for a long time that part had been neglected.

She put her hands under the the trailing sprays of untrimmed ivy hanging from the wall. and began to pull and push them aside. Thick as the ivy hung, it nearly all was a loose and swinging curtain, though some had crept over wood and iron.

Mary’s heart began to thump and her hands to shake a little in her delight and excitement. The robin kept singing and twittering away and tilting his head on one side, as if he were as excited as she was.

It was the lock of the door which had been closed for the years. She took a long breath and looked behind her up the long walk to see if any one was coming. No one was coming. No one ever did come, it seemed, and she took another long breath, because she could not help it, and she held back the swinging curtain of ivy and pushed back the door which opened slowly--slowly.

Then she slipped through it, and shut it behind her, and stood with her back against it, looking about her and breathing quite fast with excite-ment, and wonder, and delight.

She was standing inside the secret garden.

It was the sweetest, most mysterious-looking place any one could imagine. The high walls which shut it in were covered with the leafless stems of climbing roses which were so thick that they were matted together.

All the ground was covered with grass of a wintry brown and out of it grew clumps of bushes. There were numbers of flowers which had so spread their branches that they were like little trees. One of the things which made the place look strangest and loveliest was the way in which nature had woven itself around the garden, as if taking back the garden for itself, covering everything in a thick riot of emerald green and colour.

The sun was shining inside the four walls and the high arch of blue sky over this particu-lar piece of Misselthwaite seemed even more brilliant and soft than it was over the moor. The robin flew down from his tree-top and hopped about or flew after her from one bush to another. He chirped a good deal and had a very busy air, as if he were showing her things. Everything was strange and silent and she seemed to be hundreds of miles away from any one, but somehow she did not feel lonely at all.

The Secret Garden was what Mary called it when she was thinking of it. She liked the name, and she liked still more the feeling that when its beautiful old walls shut her in she was safe, hidden from the world.

She was inside the wonderful garden and she could come through the door under the ivy any time; she felt as if she had found a world all her own.